Explanation and Details

Myth #1: SEO is a sham.
This myth is hardly prevalent any more, because most responsible marketing professionals know that SEO is the most cost-effective marketing technique for gaining new customers. As numerous articles published in media sources such as Business Week, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, SearchEngineWatch.com, ClickZ.com, etc., have attested, SEO is worth doing, worth doing professionally, and worth doing as soon as possible. SEM is a multi-billion dollar industry growing faster than any other marketing channel because executives worldwide have discovered that both SEO and PPC earn extraordinary ROI.

Myth #2: SEO requires continual tweaking to keep up with changes in the search engines' ranking algorithms.
This is a very common misperception. In actuality, once a site has been expertly search engine optimized, it usually requires little or no further adjustment to maintain superb search engine placement. Some DISC clients have maintained excellent ratings for four to seven years with little or no tweaking (and no retainer fees!).

The search engine algorithms consist of two main parts: (1) a linguistic part that parses the language of each page and the site as a whole, and (2) the non-linguistic part that evaluates extra-page factors, like (primarily) incoming links and their authority, number of successful searches as measured by toolbars and people who clicked a results page link and did not return, the age of the site and age distribution of incoming links, and many other factors. SEO always has and always will focus primarily on the former linguistic part.

The question is, how much does rank depend on the first linguistic part vs. the second part? Professional SEM people and researchers offer widely differing opinions, and nobody except for the search engine engineers knows the precise answer. Estimates range from 20% to 80%. But any percentage doesn’t tell the real story. In response to a query, the search engines first create a sub-sample of their entire index based on purely linguistic content (which SEO addresses), and then apply link, PageRank, and other off-page factors, so that linguistic content is crucial to make the cut and to achieve a high initial score that is multiplied by the other factors. At DISC, we have achieved superb search engine positions for sites with only a handful of incoming links because the linguistic content was so well SEO’d. In any case, when you hire a search engine firm, your primary goal is to get the optimum influence over the linguistic part of the search engines' ranking algorithms, whatever percent that part is. True, SEO firms also aim to help you with incoming links, and should address the other non-linguistic parts of the algorithms, but these extra-page factors are much less tractable to influence (that's one main reason that the search engines created them), and it is often not cost effective to try to influence them. Reciprocal linking campaigns done properly -- without risky "link farms" or any other simplistic solution hawked by many link builders out there -- are very time consuming and expensive. So, again, SEO is mainly about using words to influence the linguistic part of the algorithms.

So, when you choose an SEO firm or employee, you seek above all linguistic acumen and first-rate copywriters who can research, select, and weave into your site's copy and code the most productive key phrases used by your best prospects when they search. (For a good discussion of the skills needed in a professional SEM person, please see DISC's CEO's article on the subject published on the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) web site at www.sempo.org/articles/outsource.php.) A good SEO firm should also research rigorously the ideal frequency, density, and distribution (fdd) with which your best key phrases should be written into the various parts of your web site's copy and code. (DISC does this research twice per year for Google, Yahoo, and MSN.)

The search engines do tweak the linguistic parts of their algorithms, but years ago they figured out the typical fdd of key phrases that occur in a page about a given topic. While it is true that the search engines are creating new ways of parsing language -- like concept clustering of related key words wherein a search for "autos" could pull up a page with mainly "cars" in it, or theming of locally linked pages in or outside of a site, or a variety of partial word matches (stemming) -- these algorithm enhancements do not change the SEO strategy and tactics your SEO professional should use. SEO is like investing in securities: One arrives at a diversified portfolio of key phrases and fdd throughout a site, so that as the search engines tweak their algorithms some of your "stock" key phrases will rise while others may fall. Thus SEO, done right, maintains and usually increases value over time. DISC’s ten-plus years of SEO has produced a consistent stream of client results that testify to this durability of SEO done right the first time.

Having said all of that, DISC does in fact engage larger clients in ongoing SEO and retainers -- but this usually entails adding new SEO, not tweaking what continues to work very well.

Myth #3: You cannot predict the success of SEO.
Given the complexity of search engines, one cannot make exact predictions of ROI, but one can predict a range of ROI that is sufficient to decide on the extent of investment in SEO. Done properly, SEO is rigorously statistical, and a predictable range of success is statistically inevitable. Professional SEM firms use (or should use) industry standard tools that show the number of searches for key phrases in the top search engines and the number of competing web sites that contain those phrases. This is so we can predict with reasonable accuracy the number of top placements and subsequent relevant traffic that SEO will bring to your site.

What's more, by multiplying predicted SEO traffic by your conversion rates (as shown by your server statistics) and the average gross profits from a new customer, you can predict the ROI of SEO and measure its success according to solid benchmarks. Such calculations – one of DISC’s specialties – help clients determine how much to invest in SEO and how to gauge success. While most SEM firms do not yet offer this prediction service, we expect more will be doing so in the near future.

Myth #4: SEO is easy to learn.
Effective search engine optimization is demanding, complex, and precise. As you can see by reading through our site, SEO is a whole lot more than merely counting key words. A competent SEO professional wields a wide array of technical as well as verbal skills, and deep experience is absolutely key to doing effective SEO. To give a sense of the challenges involved, anyone who expects to make a go at doing SEO must be able to answer all of the following questions: What percentage of popular single words vs. targeted multi-word phrases should you weave into your text, and in what frequency, density, and distribution? How much time will it take your team to convert your dynamic URLs to apparently static ones that the search engines can spider? What kinds of JavaScript menus can Google follow, and where should the JavaScript code be written? When should you use the robots.txt file, and how? How can Flash be used while preserving SEO? Does your site have a static and "clean" IP address? What kind of domain pointing and redirects are search-engine friendly, and what kinds are you using now? Is your current server statistics package sufficient for tracking SEO results right through to orders or leads, or should you consider a more devoted software solution, like ClickTracks or the newest version of WebTrends or Atlas OnePoint? What usability and navigation principles ensure that the traffic you get will convert optimally? Yahoo and AdWords prefer direct links to relevant product pages, but does your site use session variables that prevent this, and if so, how can you switch the system to use cookies, and how will this solution affect your SEO? This is a small fraction of the questions that you or your employee should be able to answer if you aim to do successful SEO in-house.

Rob Laporte, DISC's founder and CEO, chose SEO and SEM partly because his marketing and linguistics background allowed him, in 1997, to envision the future growth of SEO and SEM, and see that the field had high value and a high barrier to entry. If SEO were easy, many people would do it, thus canceling competitive advantage. There are only 20 or so listings on the first search result page, whether there are 20 competitors or 2,000. A good SEO firm will beat all or most of the competitors to achieve that prized page one placement. Doing that is far from easy. (By the way, the SEO field is resistant to off-shoring, because exceptional linguistic aptitudes together with a lifetime of living with the English language are prerequisites to success.)

Myth #5: The goal is to be number one or on page one.
Not true. Your goal is to optimize your return on investment in SEO and SEM. You’ll miss the big picture if you focus myopically on obtaining page-one ranking for a few words that you think best describe your products or services. The goal of SEO and SEM is to engineer a diversified portfolio of hundreds or even thousands of targeted phrase combinations of words that, together, achieve maximum ROI. Depending on the frequency of searches relevant to your offerings, a few targeted phrases could earn you enormous ROI. Or, conversely, you may need scores of synonymous phrases or single words to rank on page one in order to achieve maximum ROI.

Remember that it is practically impossible to assess the results of SEO by doing manual tests in the search engines. Even the specialized testing software used by SEM firms, which would take days to replicate manually, samples only a small (but representative) sub-set of all the phrases that your best prospects actually type into the search engines. The acid test of successful SEO is server statistics that show non-paid search engine referrals. DISC's follow-up reports incorporate these data to elucidate how successful our SEO has been.

Myth #6: SEO firms that offer guaranteed placement eliminate your risk.
As SEM guru web sites such as SearchEngineWatch.com and ClickZ.com have repeatedly asserted, prospective SEM clients should avoid firms that tout guaranteed placement, for the following reasons.

1. Firms offering such guarantees are rarely motivated to bring you enduring success; a quick, fleeting boost is all they need to get paid.
2. They are biased toward guaranteeing phrases that are less popular and thus easier to position for, rather than the relevant and demanding phrases that may be more competitive and important to your business.
3. Some contracts require continuing payment for continuing position (which reduces your ROI), whereas legitimate SEO done right the first time brings benefits you own in perpetuity.
4. Finally, by focusing on a handful of words for short term position, these firms fail to create a rich, diversified linguistic portfolio that can position many other relevant words and phrases beyond those contracted for.
5. Succinct, relevant, yet diversified language is most likely to endure the search engines' future fine-tunings (for example, “Latent Semantic Indexing” or conceptual clustering).
6. In short, the interests of firms that offer ostensible guarantees are not in line with your best interests.

And if you read the fine print on most guarantees of placement, you will likely get a sense of the bad ethics of the firm and move on. For example, some firms use Pay-Per-Click, not SEO, to get placement for which you pay dearly with each click.

Myth #7: "My competition has taken all the top spots in the search engines!"
Searchers use hundreds or even thousands of subtle yet crucial phrase variations describing your products or services. In fact, two recent studies found that 30% to 50% of searches have never been done before. This prolific variety is evident in client server statistics and in the specialized research tools that professional SEO firms have long employed. It will be many years before even the most competitive industries have hired the expertise and spent the time to dominate a majority of these phrases in the search engines.

Further, there is a severe shortage of qualified SEM professionals. This means that for years there will remain plenty of unexploited linguistic terrain that your business can claim in order to generate new revenue. And no matter how much SEO work is being done, "there's always room at the top" for exceptional professionals to excel.

Myth #8: SEO mainly consists of submission to (many) search engines.
Submission to the search engines, while important, is relatively simple (except for paid inclusion and trusted feeds). But it is virtually useless if SEO does not ensure that your submissions result in optimum position.

Myth #9: Unscrupulous competitors cannot directly hurt your site's position after it has been SEO’d.
We wish this were true. An unscrupulous individual out to undermine your site could use a variety of methods to hurt your search engine positions and your PPC campaigns. PPC "Click Fraud" and related abuses are discussed in this site's PPC section. This site will not mention the methods that could be used to hurt your SEO positions, because we do not want to put this information into circulation.

The top search engines strive to prevent this kind of abuse, and they have prevented some forms of it. But there is no way they could stop a dedicated assailant, and some of the attacks require surprisingly little work. Fortunately, few people know how to inflict this damage, and most of those who do are busy with legitimate business. Reported and verified cases where a site was taken out by a competitor are not frequent but neither are they rare. DISC offers a service that ascertains various forms of abuse that may be perpetrated on your web site: please see Searching the Web for Bad Press, "Page Jackers" Stealing Your SEO, and Unauthorized Resellers and "Reps".